Posts by Joshua

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I mean, at the risk of sounding too extreme, I suspect that Epicurus is even open to the possibility that drinking to excess can be beneficial under some bizarre, even common, circumstances.

I don't think I've ever related a tale with so much vigor as when I was sitting with friends at my sister's wedding reception, describing a pleasant morning on I-24 south of Nashville when the resident of a hot air balloon floating over the interstate gestured for me to pull the air horn. The wine rather added something, I think.

Ha! There's nearly an hour gone looking for the Greek text. Found 45 minutes after Don...

Since I've found it, I can record for the record that this is fragment 93 from the 4th century b.c.e middle comedy poet Eubulus, thought to be from a comic play titled Semele or Dionysus, and preserved by the 2nd-3rd century c.e. Greek grammarian Athenaeus.

Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, Book II., chapter 3

Quote from Fragment from the Greek Playwright Euboulos

"For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness."

Perhaps primordial is not so much a time, as it is a state or condition. An uncoupled atom, a "first beginning" or "seed of things" in Lucretian terms, is the atom in its primordial state. It 'falls' along an inertial path in whatever direction, swerves unpredictably, 'falls' again, couples with another atom, joins other couplings to form a body, dissolves, and falls away in an endless cycle of accretion and dissolution.

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And my take is that this was the primordial situation with all atoms falling in parallel "straight down." However, once a couple collisions happened, the order was interrupted by collisions and conglomerations in parts of the cosmos. In other parts, the parallel falling continued. And so on.

I've never been able to reconcile a 'primordial' downward movement with the concurrent claim that there was no beginning.

I didn't find it too harsh. Probably most of the people I know and love hold to some variant of that idea, and I never want to come across as callous or cruel when talking to or about them, but if we cannot speak frankly about ideas then what's it all for?

canon

noun (1)

can·on ˈka-nən

1 A: a regulation or dogma decreed by a church council B: a provision of canon law 2 [Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin, from Latin, model] : the most solemn and unvarying part of the Mass including the consecration of the bread and wine 3 [Middle English, from Late Latin, from Latin, standard] A: an authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture B: the authentic works of a writer; "the Chaucer canon" C: a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works; "the canon of great literature" 4 A: an accepted principle or rule B: a criterion or standard of judgment; "the canons of good taste" C: a body of principles, rules, standards, or norms

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I'm rethinking the various usages of the word "canon" as compared with Epicurus' Canon of Epistemology, and I'm beginning to think that we haven't been very clear on this point in previous episodes. I think the word test gets at the heart of all of these disparate applications. For example:

• Canonized saint (Catholic Church); a person by whom a Catholic is to test their life.
• Western Canon; A collection of writings against which to test the aesthetic and literary value of new writings.
• The Epicurean Canon; the three sources of knowledge by which we test what is true or knowable.

I could probably go on, but it seems to me that what separates the Epicurean canon is not that it is a test or measuring stick, and the others are not: what distinguishes the Epicurean canon is that it is a test of epistemology--other uses of the word canon are also tests, but they test different things by different criteria.

I also need to read that article!

I should add that the way the "square tower" issue is explained by some commentators, it does reduce to a tautology as you suggest--'sense organs sense'. But no inferences can be made from that, so I take it for granted that that wasn't it's proper application.

I've never experienced psychedelics, but going by report I would analyze them under the rubric I outlined above. Only in this case, instead of the brain 'involuntarily adding a layer of interpretation', it cakes it on so thickly that the reported sensation is altered completely before the conscious mind has time to act upon it. Here's a thought experiment: suppose you had one optic nerve simultaneously grafted to two different brains. One brain is high, the other is clear--what does the clear brain see?

...I've been up since 5 pm.

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It's better to admit that you don't know rather than to admit that there is anything beyond or above the senses that will let you determine the answer without them, or in contradiction of them. Because if you fall for that trap then you'll be totally lost in imaginary traps.

Something we discussed at length on the 3rd episode in the Pythocles series--the size of the Sun.

On an unrelated note, one thing I learned from looking up the definition of "norm" in this chapter is that its etymological root is Latin "norma", from Greek gnomon, meaning carpenter's square or the protruding piece on a sundial. DeWitt repeatedly says that for Epicurus "Nature furnishes the norm."

"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!"

Well...does a square tower truly look round from far away?

I think the sensation is reported accurately to the brain, and the brain involuntarily adds a layer of interpretation which may be accurate, or not, and that this happens concurrently with the sensation. How do I know if the brain is interpreting the information accurately? By comparing the interpretation with other sensory input.

If square towers look round from far away, and round towers look round from far away, how can I know whether the tower I'm seeing from far away is round or square? Neither reason nor logic have any power to settle that question--I just need more sensory input. I need to get closer to the tower. Another way to put this would be to say that any given sensation gives accurate information, buy no individual sensation contains all possible accurate information. My nose tells me there's an apple pie. My eyes don't see one. Which sense is accurate? Probably both--I'm just looking in the wrong place.

Since I've only focused on sensations in the chart I'm going to restrain myself to one thing right now--which is that I question whether error really does enter in that late in the process. I think there are numerous visual tests that demonstrate that the brain starts lying pretty much immediately upon receiving input. The retinal blind spot test is a good example. Rather than reporting two gaps in the visual field, which is clearly what the eyes sense and report due to their structure, the brain is constantly fabricating false information from the surrounding true information. The error is instantaneous.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIuVI_5QjNE97kcmxrqPLQhyJYbyrO7q/view?usp=share_link

If that links works, it will take you to a .png file on my google drive that is an export of a drawio flow chart on epistemology. I'm finding the task to be a bit overwhelming, but it might prove interesting.

I've only covered sensation so far, and have barely scratched the surface there. I have some ideas where to go with feelings, but it's all quite vague in my mind at the moment.

Prolepsis/Anticipations/Preconceptions remain completely obscure to me. I just don't understand them very well. I'm hoping this will give me a framework from which to approach the upcoming chapters in DeWitt, because this is a serious weak point of mine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tainia_(costume)

The headband/circlet/diadem/crown/whatever it is, is something I do see in ancient art but not with any clear connection. Wikipedia suggests it was festival attire, and also used by royalty and athletes. Not sure what the connection is here.

Also notice the paw footed legs of both the chair, and the curved bench in the mosaic.

This is the School of Athens fiasco all over again. The mosaic:

Appears to portray six Greek philosophers in various attitudes of respose, gathered around a central figure leaning against a tree, and thought to be Plato. As is frequently the case, no one can know for sure who the artist intended to portray. I have seen the second man from the right identified as Epicurus, though this is not the common assessment.

In favor the Epicurus argument is this statue:

In both statue and mosaic, the subject is featured with the right foot forward and the right forearm bent upward, holding a scroll. In the actual statue the head and right arm were lost, and the work was fitted with a different head and different limb. The hypothesized scroll in the hand was of course lost with the limb.

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To Epicurus it meant that the idea of primeval chaos was absurd; the universe has always been a cosmos.

This is on page 124 of Epicurus and His Philosophy by Norman DeWitt; rather than starting a new thread I thought it might fit here.

What I am surprised to learn is that "cosmos" and "universe" are not synonymous;

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Using the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. --Wikipedia

'Cosmos' in this meaning is almost a direct antonym to 'chaos', which I find interesting. Don has made reference to the use of the word παν (all, or even, "the all") as a word used by Epicurus. Is cosmos used as well?

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People were doing things for thousands of years. They were using some criteria (deliberately plural). They didn't have to stand around and ponder "the good" (or if there was one good, or many goods, or any good at all) before they could do anything.

I'm aware of the danger of erring too far the other way, but I take an alternative view of the history of this question. My sense is that the general conditions which predated Greek thought--and whatever non-Greek influences it may have had, say, in Phonoecia--were those of varying degrees of monarchy.

In Egypt, the rule of the Pharoahs had been replaced by the Persian occupation under the Achaemenid Empire; in Phonoecia itself, as well as Carthage, Etruria, and Macedonia, the monarchy was not yet in full decline. In all of these cases, the value of the individual was in his capacity as a subject. What does it mean in these circumstances to speak of a purpose in life, when the purpose is so manifestly servitude? Prosperity is a product of piety, and famine, war, destruction, conquest, and exile are, as punishments, the outward signs of a sinful and guilty people. We have, in a word, entered the world of the Hebrew Testament. It is the book not of one people, but of a whole barbaric age.

Individuality has no place in that world. The ruler is the father of a tribe--reveals himself to a tribe--makes a covenant with the tribe--and with no small degree of relish, he punishes the tribe. If they are very lucky, a scapegoat is punished on their behalf, but the motivating sin is always public, and always mutual, and always on display.

The Greek polis was, for the space of a few centuries, something new. Power was not so centralized as it had once been; the individual was governed not by an absolute monarch, but by a body of his fellow citizens. An appreciation for skill, talent, genius, and many-sidedness began to take shape, here as in the Renaissance and elsewhere always a sign of increasing liberty.

In Miletus, probably, or at least somewhere in Ionia, in the seventh or sixth century B.C. some individuals began asking a series of daring questions: what is nature? What is it made of, how does it operate, where did it come from, when does it change, and above all why? Who are we, and how should we live? What is the nature of our mind and consciousness? What happens to it when we die?

What are we here for?

These are not the kinds of questions entertained by those grasping for power and control. The Book of Job makes that plain: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?

The only question fit for an all-powerful God is a rhetorical one. He has all the answers--and that is the meaning of control. Pay no attention to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil behind the curtain. 😇